FAST Single Bass Technique

F

Flamadiddle28

Junior Member
I*have spent considerable time practicing my bass drum singles and I've hit a major obstacle in my playing: despite my efforts I am unable to pass a tempo of about 130-140 while playing 8th notes. I've heard of the same thing happening to others at around the same tempo, and many said you need to switch to playing all ankles once you reach that point. When I do all ankles I can play a real fast twitching motion, it's in time and consistent, but I cannot yet control the start to a run of fast notes (bpm +180). Will this be fixed if I just practice this fast twitching, or is that a bad thing to practice?*Also how do I play tempos from about 130 to 170 (which seem to be somewhere in the middle of the two techniques)? Any advice is appreciated, thanks!
 
Sure, you've probably noticed if you just kind of flail your leg, you can get some uncontrolled notes that are faster than anything you can play on purpose. If you fool around with that a lot, with a metronome running in the background, letting your foot feel out of control, you can eventually bring it around to being a controlled, usable technique.
 
Toddbishop: thanks for the advice, I'll definately try to hone those skills.
Ian Ballard:I'm fairly new to the forum and didn't notice that section, is there any way to change that?
 
I am a single kick player, and I play heel toe. If done correctly, people won't believe that you're not using some sort of trick pedal.

Once you get the basic technique down, you can practice 'rocking' back and forth between the heel and the toe strikes. Practice that enough, and you'll have some fast single bass skills.

I also incorporate a 'reverse slide' type technique into my heel toe when I want triplets. I just play the regular heel to, but after the toe strike, slide my foot back DOWN the pedal to get another quick toe strike.

It's all pretty simple to learn, and very useful, not to mention impressive to people who don't realize how easy it really is.
 
The middle ground is always an issue. At some point your slow technique wont be fast enough, but your fast technique wont be slow enough. Trust me, you aren't the only one having this issue.
 
But don't forget that the money starts coming in when your bass drum foot can hit quarter notes at 120 bpm with your left hand hitting that snare on 2 & 4 ;)
 
Bo Eder said:
But don't forget that the money starts coming in when your bass drum foot can hit quarter notes at 120 bpm with your left hand hitting that snare on 2 & 4 ;)
Click to expand...

You and your dang practicality, Bo!
 
Bo Eder said:
But don't forget that the money starts coming in when your bass drum foot can hit quarter notes at 120 bpm with your left hand hitting that snare on 2 & 4 ;)
Click to expand...

When does it get here? I just tried this and the money didn't come in.
 
Forget about technique.

Forget about ankle or leg motion.

Just stomp on the pedal with your foot. Practise along to music. Practise LOUD strokes with your leg. Practise it every day. Stay relaxed. Your body will naturally do what is best for itself as you build up speed.

The most important thing is ensuring that you play along to music at, above and below your 'peak' speed during every single practise session. If you have a bad day or a bad week, play slower things. If you have a good day, try and play stuff that you know is too fast for you.

If you get fixated on whether your ankles or legs should be doing the work at X - Y tempo range, then you'll lose focus on what is important: Letting your body figure it out for itself.

tl;dr version:
Forget about legs/ankles.
Play LOUD
Practise stuff below, at, and above your peak speed every day.


This is, of course, talking about 'regular' playing, ie. heel down or heel up without taking into account dual motion specialised techniques such as heel-toe and constant motion.

Oh, and if you are 'twitching' out your highest speeds and are unable to control it, you need to drop the metronome by at least 50 bpm and just start stomping on the pedal as hard and as evenly and consistently as you can. You have to retrain your body to do it right. This could take months, and I know this because I had the exact same problem.
 
IDDrummer said:
You and your dang practicality, Bo!
Click to expand...

Just sayin' ;)

I'm all for upping my own technique and I appreciate really good players too, but more and more I find myself working on my dance grooves and learning how to stay out of the way of others and basically not being obtrusive to the vibe around me while I try to help create and maintain it.

It's funny because I cringe now when somebody plays me a recording of something I did when I was in college or younger. Our over-playing wizard of choice at the time was Dave Weckl and indeed I tried to inject that into everything I did. Now we have machine-gun bass drums and guys named Jojo which is really cool, but nobody asks me to play like them!

Come to think of it, nobody asked me to play like Weckl, either. Oh well.
 
i would definitely check the ankle swivel tech. i really like this vs. heel / toe. mainly for comfort & volume.

i got this from Dom Famularo in the 90s & have been slowly working on it, i got more into building speed in the last few years especially after seeing George Kollias killing w/ this technique.

+ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gXINemV8E_0
+ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mnxm1qh_1rw (200 - 280)

i am good up to about 200 & working on more speed slowly. i dont play speed metal, but this technique really comes in handy for certain situations & just fun to work RF & LF at max speed like Tony / Vinnie.
 
Last edited:
Bo Eder said:
But don't forget that the money starts coming in when your bass drum foot can hit quarter notes at 120 bpm with your left hand hitting that snare on 2 & 4 ;)
Click to expand...

lol Bo take your logic and GTFO.
 
Flamadiddle28 said:
I*have spent considerable time practicing my bass drum singles and I've hit a major obstacle in my playing: despite my efforts I am unable to pass a tempo of about 130-140 while playing 8th notes. I've heard of the same thing happening to others at around the same tempo, and many said you need to switch to playing all ankles once you reach that point. When I do all ankles I can play a real fast twitching motion, it's in time and consistent, but I cannot yet control the start to a run of fast notes (bpm +180). Will this be fixed if I just practice this fast twitching, or is that a bad thing to practice?*Also how do I play tempos from about 130 to 170 (which seem to be somewhere in the middle of the two techniques)? Any advice is appreciated, thanks!
Click to expand...

There are two main types of motion involved: ankle and hip. The slower the tempo, the more force should be generated by using flexion at the hip and the weight of your whole leg, and the faster the tempo, the more you should be using flexion of the ankle. There's no real cutoff point, it should just gradually shift. To pull some guesstimate numbers out: at 130, I'm using roughly 90% hip and 10% ankle, at 170, I'm using 60% hip and 40% ankle, at 180 I'm using 40% hip and 60% ankle. By the time I get up to 200, it's over 90% ankle; my hips don't move much at all.

One of the best ways to develop control over ankle motion is to repeatedly switch between subdivisions. Here are a few exercises switching between quarter notes and eighth notes:

| xxx_ xxx_ | xxx_ xxx_ :||
| x_xx x_xx | x_xx x_xx :||

| x_x_ xxxx | x_x_ xxxx :||
| xxxx x_x_ | xxxx x_x_ :||

| x_x_ x_x_ | xxxx xxxx :||
| xxxx xxxx | x_x_ x_x_ :||

If you practice those at tempos around 180 - 200, you'll eventually get used to starting streams of notes with mostly ankle motion.
 
watched Joe Morello on youtube; he said play 1 bar straight 4, 1 bar 8s, 1 bar triplets and 1 bar 16ths and repeat ad nauseum and the speed will come...thats what Joe said...
 
I'll share my experience. It has taken me about a year and a half of playing about 1/2 hr a day to go from eighth notes at 135 bpm to eighths at around 180.

I am a heel up player and have always been. At first I tried playing slower (120-130) with heel down figuring this would help with ankle control. I was using some exercises on a Colin Bailey video, but after about 3 months I did not show any progress. That was it for my heel down experiment.

I then picked a tune that was 135 bpm and would play eighths for the duration of the song. My ankle would some times be spastic and would tense up. I would often repeat this a few times. Once I was able to do this I picked a tune that was 140 and would play eighths through this. I kept doing this and over time I got up to around 160 bpm.

At this point I started incorporating exercises again including the Joe Morello exercise mentioned and I was able to progress my speed. I do up to a minute of straight eighths still.

It took me a while to gain ankle control, but once I started to get it the speed came. Another thing I have always done is tried to let the beater rebound really far off the drumhead, accentuating the ankle motion. I have my spring tension is low. When my foot is resting relaxed on the pedal the beater is a couple of inches off the head.

I am sure there are many ways to get there and perhaps another strategy would have got me there faster.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top